Mathison's Spousal Support
- Hallmark actor and “All My Children” alum, Cameron Mathison, 51, beat kidney cancer last year.
- The actor recently talked about how supportive his wife, Vanessa Arevalo, was when he received his diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma.
- Having a strong support network through cancer can make the journey easier.
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Mathison’s Kidney Cancer
In 2019, Mathison was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma, a type of kidney cancer. And he had kidney surgery in October 2019 to get rid of the cancerous tumor growing there. In surgery, part of his right kidney was removed. There are two primary types of kidney cancer found in adults: renal cell cancer and transitional cell cancer. Mathison’s type of cancer, renal cell carcinoma, occurs when malignant cells form in the tubules of the kidney.
Symptoms of renal cell carcinoma include blood in the urine and a lump in the abdomen area. Other indicators of kidney cancer may include persistent pain, unexplained weight loss, loss of appetite, and anemia. It’s important to listen to your body and note any changes that may be occurring, so you can seek a physician’s care if needed.
Robotic surgery is sometimes used to treat kidney cancer tumors. In a previous interview, Dr. Heidi Gray spoke about how to prepare for robotic surgery. “There’s not a lot of preparation before surgery. There’s typically no eating after midnight kind of things like that. But most of the time, patients are just overnight in the hospital and are able to go home the next day. Again, the benefit for minimally invasive surgery, because the incisions are small, pain is less, infection is less, things like that. So patients are up walking really sometimes four to six hours after surgery. And so they’re really able to return to their homes and do their recovery at home.”
How Do You Prepare for Robotic Surgery?
Support Through Cancer
Having a strong support network through cancer, as Mathison did, is important. A good support network made up of a spouse or partner, family members, friends, and a therapist, can make the journey easier to handle.
In an earlier interview, Camila Legaspi, who lost her mom to breast cancer when she was in high school, told us how important support was to her following her cancer-related loss. Like many others coping with a cancer diagnosis or coping with grief, Legaspi turned to therapy. She said, “Therapy saved my life. I was dealing with some really intense anxiety and depression at that point. It just changed my life, because I was so drained by all the negativity that was going on.”
Related: The Value of Using a Social Worker During Treatment
Legaspi spoke to how therapy helped her keep things in perspective, too. “Going to a therapist helped me realize that there was still so much out there for me, that I still had my family, that I still had my siblings. The reality is, is when you lose someone, it’s really, really, really hard. And it’s totally OK to talk to someone. And I’m so happy that I talked to my therapist. Keep your chin up, and it’s going to be OK. No matter what happens, it’s going to be OK. There are so many of us that have gone through the same thing that you’re going through. And, together, we’re all going to get through it.”
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